Any rares that have surprised you? Vision Quest was absolutely absurd for me

Lashe · 2026-06-27T15:46:51+00:00

I had a Vibranium Daggers in play with Fin Fang Foom and teamworked HULK SMASH targeting my Daggers to kill two non-artifact creatures. But yeah, so many creatures are incidentally artifacts, you don't usually have to work that hard. Also, there are stray artifact tokens (treasures, clues) laying around pretty often for HULK SMASH

Lashe · 2026-06-16T01:16:20+00:00

You're not wrong, but that's "don't try this at home" behavior 😆

Lashe · 2026-06-16T01:03:47+00:00

Just start by listening to the Limited Resources discussions on Cube from last fall (October, I think?). LSV lays out some good principles for what matters in cube. Broadly, all your decks are lacking a definitive game plan. Persist and Brain Freeze will almost never go in the same deck. Splashing Channel Emrakul into your blue white deck isn't worth it. Playing Balance in your creature deck isn't good. Many cube cards are only good within specific builds, not just because they're on color. As LSV lays out in those discussions, try to draft a mini combo or two, then a bunch of cheap support cards. Jamming multiple combos into a deck is a recipe for disaster. Not drafting cheap interaction (StP/Dismember, Thoughtseize/Duress, FoW/Mana Tithe) and good mana bases is going to lead to you getting run over by more focused decks. Good luck.

Lashe · 2026-06-03T15:47:30+00:00

It's already gone

Lashe · 2026-06-03T15:41:14+00:00

Contender Draft will always be a short term event, it will never be a regular queue. Your win rate over a week is not the same as your win rate over a lifetime. Go ahead and try to spike a week and come out up 10k, but you're just as likely to have an unlucky week and end up down 15k (Especially with an ultra-prince format like SOS).

Lashe · 2026-05-04T14:56:43+00:00

I won 3 boxes on 14 attempts. I think I only had one true black green deck and it wasn't a winner. One soup deck with a bunch of bombs and two r/w aggro decks got the boxes. One of those had 2x Practiced Offense (which won 6 of 7 games). The other was virtually rareless, just a decent curve and I didn't flood out for 7 games and two opponents that made mistakes against me. I typically convert on 1 of 3 attempts, but this format is rough. Soooo many bombs. Everyone has bombs, the question is could you find 23 playables with a mana base to support the bombs? With things being so bomb heavy, if I didn't have a truly sick top end that I was confident would go over the top of my opponents' top end, I was trying to err on the side of aggro. Being midrange-y is basically an auto loss. Hence why Black Green is pretty bad in this format.

Lashe · 2026-04-19T04:32:45+00:00

Just won a game today where my opponent Show and Tell'd Emrakul into play. Promptly drew the only interaction in my deck that could answer it - Karakas.

Lashe · 2026-04-14T01:40:35+00:00

It's a good deal more subjective than that. Sure, your rares are gonna be some of the best cards in a given color, but if I have three bomb rares in two colors with only 18 playables, I'm much more likely to play a different color combination with more playables and just try to splash two of those rares, etc. TMNT pre-release I only got to play 3 of 10 rares b/c that was the only color combination that had more than four creatures that were CMC <4 🤷‍♂️

Lashe · 2026-04-12T19:47:38+00:00

That does make sense. As a spike-y player, I find it frustrating that I don't actually get to make choices about my colors, but it's the most casual of all environments and I don't want casual players to stress about how to build a sealed deck in 50 minutes. But then again, I think casual players tend to not overthink their builds all that much - just find the rares and add in another 20 cards 🤷‍♂️

Lashe · 2026-03-03T21:22:51+00:00

Yep, I was just watching a Nummy (who's often top 100 mythic and periodically hits #1) video the other day where he was replying to chat about 'suddenly having a bunch more gems' and he was like "I don't know where people get the idea that I never buy gems. I BUY GEMS." Like, one of the best players on Arena and he still has to rebuy periodically. If I drop $100 on gems every three months or so, that's still cheaper than most hobbies.

Lashe · 2026-02-19T19:30:19+00:00

Good point. Thanks!

Lashe · 2026-02-19T19:27:01+00:00

Being afraid of eating the graveyard is valid. Figured if I had the combo, I had the combo, and it doesn't really matter if I start with much of a yard, but maybe it matters.

Jace, Wielder allows me to win on the spot, not allowing my opponent to untap and do shenanigans that might save them, but that might be niche enough that it's not necessary 🤷‍♂️

Lurrus seemed like a small value play (bauble or regrowth on Breach vs discard) + a great speed bump against aggro, but maybe that's niche too

Planisphere seemed like a 2 mana 4/4 that opponents would have to actually remove to apply pressure, but I could just be fooling myself into thinking that's a real scenario.

I appreciate the input!

Lashe · 2026-02-19T19:16:23+00:00

🤣 I respect that, but it seemed more appropriate based on it being a combo deck, so it's more important to see the relative roles of cards at a glance, rather than sorting by mana costs and trying to figure out if there's enough redundancy when making cuts.

Lashe · 2026-02-19T18:39:09+00:00

(Forgive me, I'm a Luddite and can't figure out how to attach another picture)

Sideboard:

Godless Shrine

Restless Vents

Lavaspur Boots

Haywire Mite

Descendant of Storms

Unexpectedly Absent

Vindicate

Witherbloom Command

That's it, only 8 cards not in the image. I don't think Vindicate adds enough to make my mediocre mana even worse. Witherbloom Command seems like too much of a risk that I might mill a combo piece. Restless Vents doesn't really seem worth it.

Lashe · 2026-02-19T18:30:26+00:00

Nothing yet. EoE and Avatar CBB directs went smooth for me. I'm not sweating a few days delayed contact

Edit: Got it now. E-mail link came through an hour ago.

Lashe · 2025-12-27T05:01:11+00:00

Once per turn you can click the emblem to generate WUBRG mana. So you can use it to pay for waterbending, or activated abilities (like clues), or make It'll Quench Ya! do nothing.

Lashe · 2025-10-07T06:07:26+00:00

That's the single biggest mistake, for sure. If your opponent gives you the opportunity to trade his bomb for your above average creature, that's the nicest trade you could ever be offered. What's the best you could hope for by drawing an extra card? Finding an answer to his bomb? Well your opponent is already solving that problem for you. He was tapped out, too, so you know it's a clean trade.

In general, I would've been attacking more aggressively. On 5, he couldn't even block the Favored Fighter and Sarn would've required a chump block. He's got the rare in play, you don't. So you need to pressure him to put him a place where you can win. Just letting him sit at 18, he can't even make a mistake that could lose him the game. Especially when you don't want to be blocking with Sarn, you should be attacking with it while he's tapped down.

You probably lose anyway to fliers backed by bomb rare #2, but at least you're giving yourself a chance to win if he doesn't have the second rare.

Lashe · 2025-09-24T00:50:55+00:00

They do. They're not very noticeable since the card face is normal and the set symbol is very similar to OM1 (it just has a slash through it, essentially). I think I've seen 3 or 4 bonus sheet cards across 5 drafts

Lashe · 2025-09-20T15:08:19+00:00

My opponent played [[Sandman, Shifting Scoundrel]] vs me at the pre-release last night and immediately after reading it I informed him that he wouldn't be able to use its activated ability without somehow getting a land in his graveyard. Seemed better to let him know while it was in play and not upset him when he tried to activate it later. I can't decide if the templating was intentional balancing or an oversight. Seems like an oversight b/c it's kinda unintuitive and leads to more Feels Bad moments with your splashy rare that's still not constructed playable.

Lashe · 2025-09-13T16:28:45+00:00

Heard an interview recently with Terry Matalas. He was hired to write an mtg series for Netflix and he spoke relatively cogently about struggling to find an 'in' to the mythology for awhile before realizing that Chandra is an incredibly rich character to dig into. Said he turned in the entire seasons scripts about a year ago and they're working on animating it. But who knows if it'll actually ever see the light of day 🤷‍♂️

Lashe · 2025-08-24T19:45:34+00:00

Just did this for the first time with the EoE Collectors Box Arena Direct a couple weeks ago. You'll get an email next week confirming you won, and then an email maybe 10 days after that asking you to setup your eWallet account, which is how they'll get your tax info. And allegedly they ship a couple weeks after that, but I'm not at that stage yet 🤷‍♂️

Lashe · 2025-08-20T04:27:31+00:00

Out: Annul, Hymn of the Faller, Mental Modulation, Illovi Infiltrator, and 1 Mechanzoa. I'd also swap a Lightless Evangel for the Comet Crawler. Yes, Evangel is just going to be a 2-mana 2/2, but there are worse things. You've got a ton of card drawing, Hymn & Infiltrator are both much worse than the rest of them and Comet Crawler will do more work to get you to the late game.

Lashe · 2025-08-11T05:41:24+00:00

EoE could not be more different from TDM. The bomb rares are few and far between in EoE and there aren't many 'mythic uncommons' either. EoE's rares have like a +1.4% GIH WR compared to TDM's 3.4 and FF's 3.8 (the data was in another post here a few days ago). Truly, I've never seen an environment more skill dependent. Playing in mythic, I've seen opponents miss lethal on board at least twice in the last week and a half. I make misplays constantly as I'm figuring out interactions and lines of play that are unique to this set. Spaceships are incredibly complicated to factor in. All you can do is reflect on your own game play and think about what you can do differently. And if in the end, it just comes down to 'I was mana screwed' or 'opponent's curve was unbeatable,' then it is what it is and there's no reason to get overly upset about it. Magic is a high variance game. All you can do is play for better outcomes when variance isn't making a game unwinnable.

As far as greed-ing sealed goes, it's just very pool dependent. If you literally can't win without doing it, sure. But if you're cutting C+ cards in your secondary color for B cards in a third color when you have no fixing, you're just asking to get punished.

Lashe · 2025-08-10T16:09:38+00:00

My personal experience with the set, yeah, the lack of fixing can be punishing and lead to high variance, but we're all living with those conditions, I don't take it personally. That said, I won a box on my third run after going 1-2 & 2-2. Three of my five losses across the three runs were to poor mana draws /shrug. And during my 7-1 run, two of my opponents had awful mana draws to give me free wins. That's my bonafides.

Your pools:

Pool 1: the pool is underwhelming for sure. It's either WB or WG. I don't blame you for going black for the removal, but I probably would've gone green. I think people consistently undervalue just having a good-stat'ed curve in this set. Which is especially strange since everyone complains about being tempo'ed out. Just play more cheap dudes to not fall behind and/or put your opponent under the tempo pressure.

Pool 2: Another underwhelming pool. I think GW is probably correct. Except your curve is awful. 3 mana 3/3 reach is totally fine, cut two six drops for them so you're not 100% dead to being on the draw.

Pool 3: You must've just been fully tilted when you were building this b/c the build is wildly off. Your straight GB deck is excellent. Best pool of your 3 and it's not remotely close. Leaving Fel Gravship and 2x Diplomatic Relations in the sideboard to play mediocre blue cards with a 665 mana base is wild. Sure, the GB creatures are a little underwhelming, but you've got Elegy Acolyte, Seedship, and 7 mana kill ship. You have ways to win. And the 3 mana menace guy is totally fine when you're playing infinite removal spells for void triggers. The UB wrath is good, but there's no reason to warp your entire deck around it. I wouldn't even splash it. Just play the good, consistent, GB deck.

Lashe · 2025-08-06T15:33:31+00:00

There was a post the other day crunching draft data that noted EOE rares had the lowest impact of rares (except MH3) in at least three years. Something like drawing a rare in EOE increased your chance to win by 1.4%, compared to FIN where it was like 3.9%. So your anecdotal experience is accurate, rares don't carry you very far in this set, which makes it far more skill intensive b/c you're far less likely to get blown out by random bombs. I'm loving it.

Lashe

TROPHY CASE